



We were away from the car a bit after 9, full waterproofs on, the hills shrouded in cloud.




We missed the crossing for the path,


There were some right bonny wee spots along there, but every time I paused, Dad seemed to get further ahead, so had to make a boggy dash at one point to keep him in my sights.



Further up the glen, we saw a mass of peat haggage ahead, and with our path getting rather faint, we followed the grassy banks of side stream, up to the path marked on the map It skirted above the peat hags and up a couple of steeper sections and on to the bealach. We sat in the nice shelter there and got the flask out. Other walkers appear to have been trying to make the shelter more windproof by filling the cracks in the walls with rubbish.

Soon we were heading upward, toward the clag. It was steep and boggy in a couple of places, but not nearly as bad as I remembered it from a previous trip.

Up in the clag, I never saw much of Dad, but could hear him making his ptarmigan call noise, and could see a couple of them come out from behind rocks to satisfy their curiosities.

We made it up to the coll, the humidity and lack of breeze almost stifling,


There were quite a few false summits in the clag, but it still wasn’t far. We sat in the mist and ate and drank more tea.

We retraced our steps, and started up the wide grassy ridge leading up Clach Geala. It seemed like a long slog in the humid conditions, the sun burning through the cloud for a bit to give some blue skies above. Still couldn’t see much though.

We stopped at the summit again, which turned out to be very busy. Group after group came up from the other way.

We had hopes it would clear, it felt like it would so we hung around awhile, but then it went back to thick clag, so we decided to carry on. It was still only 1PM, and it felt like we were getting round the route a bit too fast, so we slowed down.

The descent from Clach Geala was a delight. Slabby, rocky tors appeared from the mists and the path wound through and round them in a most pleasing manner.

The ridge curves the wrong way slightly, so we were eventually forced onto the non descript, grassy descent. We came out below the cloud briefly for a boggy coll, then up at an easy angle, to the rather more round lump of a hill that is Meall a Chrasgaidh.

We finished our tea beside the shelter there, and then continued along the ridge downward. This is definitely the best bit of the hill, with slabs and low lying alpine willows making the way interesting. The cloud was finally parting and we were getting some nice views now.



The final descents were steep, so some zigzagging down to a small track, which in turn passed close to the path before long. An easy river crossing and we were just a couple of km to the car in increasingly sunny conditions.



I was surprised at how easy this walk had been and we were back so early, we had plenty of time for a pint at the dam on the way home.

